 The only easy day was yesterday. HANDS OFF! Get your hands off and get your eyes open. Stop trying to hide from the pain. Hands off, eyes open. Welcome to the Only Easy Day Was Yesterday, the official Navy Seal podcast. The open water can be both deadly and unforgiving. Before sailors become seals or swick, they must demonstrate mastery of this punishing and unpredictable element, making it their most valuable ally. I'm Daniel Fletcher. Today we speak with aquatics expert Dan Kish at the Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. We discuss the best practices, tools, and techniques used exclusively by Navy Seal or swick candidates and operators, particularly the combat side stroke. Let's dive in. For starters, thank you for taking the time. Your expertise is super important to be able to share with as many people as possible that are trying to get successfully through this program. For starters, if you can just go ahead and spend a little bit of time talking about your role here at Naval Special Warfare and then we can take it from there. Sounds good. My name is Dan. I am one of the physical training leaders here at Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School. My main point of focus is the aquatic side. It's much more than just swimming. We spend a lot of time on treading, water rescue, pool comp skills. My job is to help make the candidates as comfortable and confident in the water over the eight weeks here and plan and execute all the work out safely to the highest standard that we expect of them. The water aspect of kind of the initial exposure to the standards of the physical standards test is usually where a lot of people, I think, have their weakest. At least most people have not been exposed to the level of swimming that is needed, required to be able to make it in the program or even kind of start training. So I think that your information will be really valuable for a lot of people listening. Maybe just if you could start off with talking just a little bit about your background in aquatics. I'm guessing that you were a swimmer or you were involved in some sort of water sports before you came into the program. So correct. I always loved being in the water. I was that kid. You couldn't get me out of the pool, the lake growing up. I got pretty good at swimming. So I swam, you know, the aquatic kid, high school, club, college, a little bit of post-graduate swimming. So all the staff members are division one swimmers, collegiate swimmers. Did some post-graduate swimming. Was good. Got into coaching, became successful at that. And I've been here since class 297, so just over five years now. And I love it. We get all walks of life from kids that barely seen a pool, barely passed the PST to get in to Olympic gold medalists and everything in between there. So all walks of life come through and kids just want to learn to get better in the water. But water is a majority of time. They're weakest environment to be in. We're humans. We don't belong in the water at all. And a lot of kids come to prep, not prep for what we're about to do here. The focus of this episode is the combat side stroke. And we'll get to that in just a second. You mentioned a couple other areas that your focus is on, whether it's treading water and stuff like that. Are there areas that maybe other than the combat side stroke that people maybe should investigate, in addition to that stroke specifically, to at least kind of get themself familiar with? Absolutely. Besides just swimming combat side stroke, we swim at slick, so without fins on and then with fins on. We also train freestyle almost every day. And we also swim breaststroke here. So they all are a great asset to know and learn. The better you are at all the strokes, the better you'll be at any one. We'll even throw some butterfly just for fun in there as well. Great cardio building tool, great fuel for the water. But they all serve a purpose. We swim a lot of freestyle when we start doing rescues to get to your victim. Great way to increase your lung capacity there. Breaststroke, we want to learn the pull for guiding and siding purposes. The kick to help you with the tread and to learn underwater breaststroke pullouts is more the most efficient way to swim underwater there. So basically, you covered almost all aspects of aquatic sports in terms of swimming styles. I would be hesitant to say maybe it's worth someone's time to really become very, very, very proficient in all of those. Obviously they're going to be using those strokes to train in more of a fitness context and more of a development context. Not necessarily they're going to be specifically quizzed or tested in those areas. But obviously it's helpful to know that. That's not the only thing you're going to be doing in the water, obviously. Correct. The exit test, so in order to leave Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School, you have to do the 1,000 meter swim combat side stroke under 20 minutes, which are average times right around 17 minutes. However, we still want you to become great at all the strokes, all the skills. It's just more tools. You can add your toolbox to help you out further down the pipeline. So obviously we're going to try to unpack a little bit about some of the unique, I guess, challenges or difficulties that people have or maybe not so unique, common difficulties people have with the specific stroke. So if you want to kind of start in really a broad sense, maybe take a 1,000 foot up view of areas that you think are common that people have a misconception or maybe a very, very, very common mistake and maybe the quick fixes for those things just is kind of a real quick touch on that area. So combat side stroke, I swam competitively for over a decade and I didn't even know what combat side stroke was until I got into the military. And then I started realizing what the stroke was, why it was created, and then how to critique and correct it to be as efficient as possible, try and be the fastest as possible and still create that low profile while swimming combat side stroke. So a lot of the time, the first couple of weeks here and what really needed to stress is technically correct swimming. Perfect, pretty combat side stroke. Speed will eventually come but focus on just perfect technique starting off. Trying to be as long and efficient in the water as you can. We see a lot of students or candidates come through that have a little bit bigger and bulkier muscles. Those are not always the best for in the water. Decreasing your range of motion. We want to be as long as possible. Get your stroke count down to help you prepare for those longer open water swims to be taken place. So is it fair to say that you see a lot of people that are maybe even just learning for the first time kind of trying to quote over muscle to kind of push and put too much into it and not focus on taking their time and lengthening their stroke and being efficient? Is that, do you think accurate? Yes, witness that today during a PST just because you're taking more and more strokes. You're swimming more violent and higher turnover rates. Sometimes you feel like you're going faster and you're not going to lie. There's a kid swimming next to him taking half as many strokes and going faster. So I see that man attitude where you want to race and compete and you're taking a ton more strokes but you're just working harder to go the same time or sometimes even slower. It doesn't mean you're getting anywhere faster. Correct. Are there any big areas or maybe what are some of your cues that you say to get people to kind of slow down? I would obviously think just like a running race where they go out hot, you know, they're adrenaline's pumping, they're breathing faster, everything, you know what I mean? Absolutely. And we see that here over the eight weeks. We do many different workouts from short, fast, you know, high intensity sprints to longer distance and the last couple of weeks here we focus a lot on pacing. We always have the clock facing you. You always watch, you know, the clock. When you leave, what your splits are. Are you hitting your goal times? Are you making the set? Running and swimming, you're always against the clock. You know, in the weight room, it's weights. In the pool, you have to watch the clock to see how fast you are going. Other than kind of, I would say, excuse me for not using maybe the correct terminology, maybe strokes per minute or whatever the term is. What else do you see in terms of kind of like quote sloppy form? That's a really common thing that you're constantly having to queue people with, you know, not to do. So other things we see in the water, in the pool, a lot of candidates will be swimming uphill, which is quite natural with the body position in the water. Same thing as running uphill. Running uphill, it's a lot more energy. Now when you say swimming uphill, can you give me kind of a, what that means to you? Coaches are yelling at you like your feet are dragging on the bottom of the pool. Your hips are sagging down. You are creating more drag for yourself. So running uphill is very difficult. Running uphill would be the same metaphor for that. To correct that, we want to try and get your legs going a little bit more. So your feet should be near at the surface. Your hips should be at the surface, as well as your whole body line, your head. Normally when people are not using their legs as much or thicker candidates in the water, but this will have a direct correlation. Once we start doing buddy toes, you're going to have that same bad body position. Now you have to toe someone and you're just creating a significant, higher amount of drag for yourself, which is stay away from swimming uphill. And is that typically a head position issue that kind of then lead the body follows it or what's usually the culprit there? So correct, head position does play a major role for that. The top of your head will always be pointing in the direction of travel. The majority of candidates, we will see, you can swim really good, showing me the top of your head point forward, but then they go and take a breath and they will lift their head to breathe, which will shoot that body position back uphill, which is incorrect, creating more drag. A lot of our candidates are good until they do take a breath. So A, don't breathe, or B, learn how to control that breath or get back into position. Absolutely, so snap that quick breath in. You will have one eye in the water, one eye out of the water. When your mouth is above the surface, you are inhaling only. We should not be hearing you exhale and inhale when your mouth is above the surface. So dump that air out right before your breath. If you're very negative in the water, keep the air in, but right before your breath, dump that air out. When your mouth is above the surface, inhale only, eyes right back down. And that's for freestyle and for combat side stroke. Same body position. So would you say that is probably the largest deficiency in people's stroke whenever they arrive? Or really the thing you see the most common is body position in terms of swimming uphill like you're speaking about and not being able to breathe very efficiently and get back into the right position. Is that the most common problem that you see? Body position plays a major role. Conditioning and speed will come along, but if you're swimming uphill, you're just burning wasteful energy. Another major issue we see candidates stop, pause or sink at some point in their stroke. We always want to move forward in the water, whether it's combat side stroke, breast stroke, or freestyle. A lot of times we'll see them move forward in the stroke and then take a breath and stop, pause, sink, and then start moving forward again, stop, pause, sink. We want to always move forward in the water, even during your breath. Maintain that body moving forward. Just because you're taking a breath does not mean you need to stop, pause, or sink. What do you think of the culprit? My first instinct is to think that the rhythm there is not comfortable quite in the rhythm of the stroke at an experienced thing or are there other culprits? It's actually difficult to do. They will have a pull, breathe, kick, glide, pretty common pattern for combat side stroke and for breast stroke. You can start with your arms, then get your breath, execute your kick, and hopefully have a long glide. During the breath part of that, don't stop dead in the water. Do not sink and create more drag. Always be moving forward. Once again, back to the breathing. Normally our candidates are good until they do take a breath and stop in the water there. Keep your legs going, especially with freestyle. Always engage your legs. Always keep your legs going behind you. In combat side stroke, during your recovery, try to have the least amount of underwater recovery as possible. When your arms are underneath the water, try to have the least amount of resistance that you can. Active streamlining. You said something about recovery. You are talking about getting your hands back out in front of you for the stroke again. Can you go into a little bit more detail or a least amount of resistance? Is that what you are saying? Correct. For combat side stroke, it was designed to be very low profile. No white water or splashing taking place. It is a very efficient stroke. However, just like breaststroke arms, the underwater recovery part of the stroke is underwater, which is not very efficient because you are pushing yourself backwards when you do that. You want to over exaggerate the underwater recovery and minimize the amount of resistance when you move your hands back out into the streamline position. So you are not fighting yourself, essentially. Don't push yourself backwards at all during your strokes there. Okay. Is this stroke used primarily as a test and fitness mechanism, if you will? Or is this stroke used operationally during mission? Both are correct. The stroke is great to increase your overall fitness levels without banging up your body. Swimming is a great way whether whatever stroke you are doing increase your overall fitness with very low to no impact. You should be able to swim for hours still feel good. It is not like you are banging up your body high stress, high impact environment. So when you do swim, make sure you are over exaggerating that you feel loose in the water. That plays a cardio fitness role in it. But operationally speaking it was designed to be efficient so you could be able to swim your long distances infiltrate and extract a couple miles and still carry out the mission. The low profile aspect so when you are swimming up to shore you don't have a bunch of white water splashing behind you a bunch of noise coming in and it is quite simple to learn and execute. We do a lot of fine tuning getting dialed in here but if you look throughout history swimming has played an important role in the history of mankind and warfare in every century. It goes back in the day but just recently with the UDTs you look at World War II Korea, Vietnam there is many aquatic stories from the greats but if they did not have that maritime aquatic background we would not have heard about these stories at all. How does combat side stroke differ from the regular side stroke? Is there glaring differences very similar? Just maybe give me some detail on that would be great. So the common side stroke that you see from swim lessons or your local YMCA where you are basically picking apples off a tree and putting them in the basket just like three years old. Combat side stroke you are going to have a little bit more rotation so we are not going to be swimming flat. And the hips are in the shoulders area. So just like any sport you will have a lot of power come from your hips and your core. Back to those common mistakes that we see from our candidates where people swim flat which we do not want. Swimming is not just your arms up swimming is not just your legs down body engaged. Drive with your hips and your core back on to streamline on your stomach. I see maybe there is no glide phase of the stroke but towards the end of the stroke you are facing the bottom of the pool more than just facing the side of the pool. Correct your belly button will not point to the wall the entire time you will be rotating so your belly button will point at the wall and the bottom throughout every cycle when you take your breath with one eye in the water, one eye out moving at the wall then once you execute your scissor kick so your top leg will start initiating that rotation the top leg will go forward execute your scissor kick and while doing that you are going to drive with your hips back into the streamline position so it should be quite fluid motion during your pull breath powerful kick and glide but we are not swimming flat on one side the entire time you will be rotating with this combat side stroke drive with your hips and your core full body exercise don't swim flat and then don't over rotate either so we see some candidates where they want to take a big breath and they look up to the ceiling and then they have to spend all that time going back into the streamline position on their stomach wasting a lot of time and over rotating onto their backs which is what we don't want the whole face and both ears out of the water you know kind of thing and that plays a role with swimming uphill if you pick your head up to breathe for your breath your hips will drop if you over rotate on your back you are wasting more time which is unnecessary and inefficient so we want to be as efficient as possible while swimming there we are looking at the PST a little bit kind of like a race even if it's just against the clock or yourself it's beneficial to kind of helping the combat side stroke time diminish in terms of kind of water fitness if you will that's probably not the right term absolutely the better you are at all four strokes the better you'll be at any one all those elite swimmers if you see just a butterfly or just a back stroker they swim all four strokes almost every day still whether it's just a little bit a little warm up, cool down, main set you will always train combat side stroke on your good side the entire time like I said we'll do some freestyle almost every day give yourself challenging breathing patterns a wonderful way to build up your lung capacity wow having a little bit of elevated heart rate with freestyle combat side stroke both sides we will train breast stroke the first week here we'll break it down where we have demonstration which drills are just bite size pieces of the stroke broken down so just the kick or just the arms focusing on being as hydrodynamic and focusing on the underwater recovery aspect so we will focus a lot those first week or two here drills are just bite size pieces of stroke to put it all together in the long run so my kind of takeaway so far about kind of developing up your combat side stroke ability general comfort in the water through a variety of strokes and being in there often enough that your body is kind of not necessarily grown used to it but it really has flexibility and strength to the point where you're comfortable enough to get the time that you need it's not that you need to do these crazy static breath holds or put weights on yourself or do this type of really hard plowing work so much as it is getting yourself comfortable enough that you can do the stroke properly and I think putting that before busting your butt on the side stroke that you're not doing right it seems like that kind of stuff comes even more important than your combat side stroke is that true or am I really kind of a little bit off there? That's a good summary of what we're talking about here that focus on part bit by bit and then you'll eventually put it all together work on that perfect technique and then slowly start you know taking the amount of time you spend in the pool then start watching the clock a little bit more you know a little bit more intense workouts and then start watching your times drop hopefully this is a new stroke for I would say the vast majority of people if not everybody you know people have probably barely been exposed to the side stroke the normal side stroke will call it unless they've had swimming instruction right so combat side stroke being totally new people I'm sure will jump on the web or maybe if they're lucky or smart enough to find a swim coach or a team or a group ask them about it what do you see that's common misinformation about this specific portion of the training process? One of the worst ones that I witness online and all the staff see it too is when swimming combat side stroke your lead arm or the arm the always your bottom arm so if you're swimming on your right side your right hand just like a breaststroke your right hand should stay out in front of your body you're not pulling that arm all the way down to your hips and then pushing yourself backwards almost with the underwater recovery portion so your lead arm or you're swimming on your right side your right hand will always be out in front of your chest so a small range of motion you're not getting a lot out of the arm so during your pull your breath your hand will start coming towards your chest and then when you feature kick in your glide push it back in the streamline but do not pull that lead arm all the way down to your hip stop in the water and then all that underwater recovery is going to start pushing you the opposite way of what you want to be traveling. And so that's something that you see as kind of a maybe piece of common misinformation you know what honestly I think with the term even side stroke it seems like that lead hand is that what you call it the lead hand? Your lead arm is doing a little bit more kind of a tugging crawl it's not doing a full stroke it's kind of they're almost treading water pulling you forward kind of consistently not a full stroke so to speak it's more of a repetitive kind of crawl I guess it's maybe not the right word but correct it's a smaller range of motion out in front of your body which is the sculling motion so keeping your hand you're not going to get a lot of power out of it similar to a breaststroke pull just enough to pick your head up for your breath and shoot back down the streamline. Yeah more of a corkscrew and not a full shoulder you know a stroke all the way to your side I see what you're saying. But that also plays a role once we start introducing buddy toes or water rescues you can do that same exact motion with that lead arm the entire time so it's still you know a drill that we'll do here that will also be used down the pipeline with water rescues so it plays a role and it reduces the amount of time of underwater recovery in the stroke which should make you more efficient less drag increasing speed there so for people for the folks at home it would be great to see this visually you're showing me more of a rotation past the elbow a circular rotation as opposed to a full stroke so it's kind of a constant more of a rotation as opposed to a stroke that does make a lot more sense to be able to keeping you from having more of a cycle in the stroke and keeping you moving forward as opposed to that pause that you're talking about earlier as a problem there's a lot of talk about technique and that's also in the kind of judging standards for the PST whether it's pull ups push ups clean reps is there anything for people testing themselves in this process to be aware of in terms of technique that will get them kind of red flagged or you know this lap doesn't count or anything like that that they need to be aware of yes so when we do our testing here your wrists will always be in the water so the whole point of combat side stroke is to have that low profile where we're not taking you know freestyle strokes with your arms flying all over the place so maintaining that low profile of keeping you know your wrists or hands in the water all time so if we start seeing the hands come out you'll be warned strictly once by an instructor staff member and if it happens again you'll be pulled from the test so that's one of our criteria as well as never touching the bottom of the pool while we swim you know if you take a break you know 500 yard swim operationally speaking it's going to be taking place in the ocean there's no there's no wall or floor to stop and take a break so never touch the bottom of the pool when you're swimming and don't spend time on the walls so when you do practice in the standard 25 yard pool spend as little to no time on the walls as you can when you're tested here what apparatus is used in terms of on person the initial entrance PST you have to swim your 500 yard swim which can be swim, combat side stroke, breaststroke or basic side stroke and that has to take place under 1230 in order to get into our program you'll be wearing trishorts with the traditional UDT shorts so you're talking basically like swim trunks, spandex kind of set up yes not a lot of drag they're not beach board shorts which are good for training actually correct with a standard dive mask on so covering the nose during the exit test you will have the same swim trunks a dive mask but now you'll be having fins and booties on so rubber booties around your feet your fins over that your dive fins over that and you'll be executing a thousand meter combat side stroke under 20 minutes 17 minutes is our average so you should be crushing that you should be able to float you know a 17 minute thousand meter swim no problem before you leave here and that's mask as well there with your mask on ok well great I'll let you kind of um kind of summarize and give us the you know you have 15 seconds to give somebody the important pointers of the combat side stroke and your comfort in general find a pool get in and swim try and join a swim team or a water polo club get with your friends get in the water spend as much time in the water as you can and come to prep with a good base or foundation that we can build on well Dan thank you so much where can people find out more about the specific standards for combat side stroke and any other details they might want to about this topic go to steelswick.com wonderful illustrations pictures and descriptions about how to swim combat side stroke and what to expect here at Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School great Dan thank you so much for your time and all the great information anytime find out more at steelswick.com and join us again for the next NSW podcast